Page 48 of The Tapes
Nicola waits for her mum to go and then turns to me, where we share a second of acknowledgement. We both know what’s just happened. ‘How are you holding up?’ she asks.
I nod to the woman that recently entered, who is now slotting herself onto a chair three rows from the front.
‘Do you know who that is?’ I ask.
Nicola angles forward and then back. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Me either. She knew me though.’
Nicola leans towards me a fraction. ‘Might be a gatecrasher here for the free food. I can get Dad to kick her out.’
I laugh as Nicola touches my side. ‘You sure you’re all right?’
‘I think so.’
‘You said you’d been thinking about your mum…?’
I sigh, not sure I want to talk about this now. ‘Maybe I’m just that age,’ I say. ‘You get to forty-odd and people start dying.’
There’s a moment when it feels like Nicola might be about to make a joke, though she stops herself. I almost tell her to go for it. I’d prefer that to the pitied looks coming from others.
It’s not the time and definitely not the place, though I don’t know whether Nicola will be hanging around after the ceremony. ‘Do you remember when we were at the cinema a couple of years ago?’ I ask.
It’s out of the blue, so Nicola’s ‘Huh?’ is understandable.
‘You, me, Shannon and Faith were there,’ I say, thinking it was probably the last time we did something with all four of us together. ‘When there was that shooting.’
Her eyes widen in recognition but she’s still baffled as to why I’m asking about this now. ‘Course I do.’
‘Did you actually see the person get shot?’ I ask.
She looks surprised. ‘I was with you.’
I try to remember. The gunshot was before the movie started and Nicola had definitely nicked outside for a smoke at some point. I don’t know whether she was in or out when it happened.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Nicola asks, as she touches my arm.
‘There’s something weird about that day,’ I add. ‘I looked it up before I came here. Somebody was stabbed outside the cinema. The guy who did it was about to come inside – but he was shot in the arse as he was going through the doors. The bang meant everyone’s eyes were on him, and everyone realised he was carrying a knife. Someone got him on the floor and someone else called 999. So whoever shot him, it worked – it stopped him. The guy with the knife has been in a secure unit ever since – but nobody ever found out who shot him.’
Nicola frowns. Maybe she knows this, maybe not. When we left the cinema two-and-a-bit hours later, there was police tape and blood on the ground. We’d missed the lot because they hadn’t stopped any of the movies. It was one of those moments we weren’t a part of, and yet it always felt as if we were. What would have happened had the knifeman made it further into the cinema? What if Faith had left the auditorium to go for a wee and the man with the knife had been right there? Who shot him?
‘The pistol the girls found at the back of yours isthatgun,’ I say.
Nicola was seemingly about to say something else, though stops herself. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The guy with the knife at the cinema was shot by someone. Nobody knew who – and they still don’t – but the gun used was the one Faith and Shannon found the other day.’
Nicola is open-mouthed. ‘How do you know?’
‘The police came round this morning.’
Nicola’s ‘What…?’ is an understatement. She’s quiet because a new couple hurry up the stairs and stop to say hello to me.I vaguely recognise them as neighbours who live a couple of doors down from the house I’m in the process of selling. We go through the usual hellos and sorries, before they take a seat on what’s turned into my side.
‘I don’t think I understand,’ Nicola says. ‘The shooting was two years ago. More. How did it get to the back of my house?’
She has a point – but, unless her dad told her, she doesn’t know all of it. Mum’s fingerprints are on that gun and, by the time it was shot, she had been disappeared for a little over a decade. Did shereallypull the trigger that day? Was she somehow a guardian angel, watching over Faith and me?
It feels impossible and yet.
